As consumers become more comfortable with taking charge of their dead, there will be more room to introduce new methods of body disposition, writes Jennifer Luxton in a story published in Yes Magazine (What’s a Death Midwife? Inside the Alternative Death Care Movement, 3rd Sept 2015).

“Keep the body at home after the person dies,” says Char Barrett, a Seattle-based funeral director and certified ‘death midwife.’ “For families who want it, they should have the right to do it.”

For the majority of human history, families handled arrangements for the deceased, from the time immediately after death, to burial or cremation. Until the advent of modern hospitals and health care at the turn of the last century, it was the norm for the old and sick to die at home surrounded by loved ones, says Luxton.

“A funeral director is a wedding planner on a compressed time scale,” says Jeff Jorgenson, owner of Elemental Cremation and Burial.. “With the exception of the legality of filing a death certificate, a funeral director does the exact same things a wedding planner does: They make sure that the venue is available, that the flowers are ordered, the chaplain is there for the service, and that the guest of honor, be it the bride or the dead person, is there on time.”  The business prides itself in being Seattle’s ‘only green funeral home.’

This is one fascinating story and well worth reading in full.  Find it at:  http://www.yesmagazine.org/inside-the-alternative-death-care-movement-20150807